Forum:Girl Genius Military vs Modern RL US Military. Do or Die: Who Wins?
Order Of Battle Wulfenbach's forces include battle clanks, the Dreen, Death Rays, Zeppelins (which I suspect have Kevlar-type armoring), and Og-knows-what-else. The US Military? Everything that modern tech & a bloated & out-of-control Defense Budget can provide, and a bag of chips. Plus nukes. Terms Of Engagement. We must invade, & conquer Wulfenbach lands, so our Civilians can survive an otherwise un-named Great Diaster. Wulfenback must win, 'cause he's got an ego the size of Montana. Who wins? --Bosda Di'Chi 16:59, June 13, 2012 (UTC) My thoughts? Castle Heterodyne lasts about 15 minutes. US has unquestionable air superiority. Nothing in the GG universe can exceed the speed of sound. Castle Heterodyne is also not, to be fair, the most radar-stealthy shape. Our fighters should be able to tear it to shreds quickly. Airships go down quickly too. Traditionally, balloon gondolas are made from silk. I'm picturing silk or spider silk as the material of choice. Ridiculously strong. Not strong enough to resist impact from an armor-piercing vulcan cannon round, not to mention a hundred such rounds. Eventually those things will go down. Meanwhile, our fighters travel faster than their cannon shells and bullets, so we're good. You might think size is an advantage. Consider a US naval warship. Unlike the game Battleship, it takes only one hit with an exocet missile to sink any vessel. This means large ships are a liability, which is why the US only has destroyers and aircraft carrier, plus assorted smaller craft. Destroyers are the smallest ship capable of cross-ocean travel. Aircraft carriers are the smallest ship capable of launching aircraft. Our aircraft should be capable of taking out anything Klaus can put in sky or sea in one shot. Maybe Castle Heterodyne's so large it would take two shots. Air superiority means they can't field anything big on land or sea. We see it, it goes boom. Large armies, formations, any of that nonsense you see in ground battles in Clone Wars, out of the question. It'd be reduced to its component pieces in minutes. So we can field armies, they can only form a ragtag resistance. Here's where the tables turn: leadership. Klaus has a dictatorship. Dictatorship is actually a great form of government if you can get a great person as your dictator. All the messy problems with democracy like distributed leadership and trying to pander to the masses goes away. Don't get me wrong, I think democracy has a lot of things going for it. And we set it up so that in wartime, our president can act like a king so things get done quicker. But even still, our political leadership is going to only be so good at handling the situation. Our president will hopefully have advisors who are experienced in all areas, because in wartime economics are just as important as martial strategy. Meanwhile, Klaus is an expert at everything, and smarter than any real-world human has ever been. Combine Machiavellie and Sherlock Holmes and House and Victor von Doom and Einstein and a hundred other geniuses and you end up with someone like Klaus. Klaus can run a shadow war. And every time he takes down one of our vehicles, he gains our technology. He takes it apart to figure out how it works. This takes him, say, ten minutes. Then he figures out how to improve it. This takes him, say, 30 minutes. Then he starts manufacturing the stuff it takes to manufacture it. Soon, their automated fighters are going up against ours and winning. Plus, all of Klaus' sparks now are messing with modern tech, causing a ruckus. I should point out that by now, a lot of sparks have sided with the US because they hate Klaus. He kept them in check because he was the most powerful person in the world. Now he's not. This sounds like it would put the US on even footing with Klaus, but it wouldn't. The scientists who defected don't like being controlled, and they know they can get away with stuff under US supervision that Klaus would figure out by overhearing half a comment about the spark's workplace and then stop. The sparks will cause as much trouble for the US as they help, in typical spark fashion. So Klaus gains the upper hand in this war, turning the tides and building an empire from the ashes. Could he really do that, you ask? Seize power when he's be taken down to guerrilla warfare. He's built an empire from less. What this is really going to come down to is WMD. America would get to a point where they're more scared to not use them than they are of using them and then they'd attempt to launch the nukes and maybe release some viruses. This would involve DESTROYING THE WORLD and as such would be stopped by Othar Trygvassen or someone else, someone whose powers of narrative causality allow them to succeed in keeping the world from being destroyed just in the nick of time. There is at least one such group of plucky heroes in Klaus' kingdom at all times. My conclusion: Klaus wins despite massive initial setbacks. And I think the world would be better for it. 06:06, August 21, 2012 (UTC)